Napoleon’s First Taste of Action
Revolutionary France had made lots of enemies. Rather wishing to avoid Louis XVI’s fate, other European monarchs were desperate to ensure that the revolution wouldn’t be allowed to succeed and its ideas able to spread. The British, Prussians, Austrians and Spanish entered into war with the French Republic. And when the royalist-sympathizing southern French town of Toulon offered to open its port to a combined British and Spanish naval force, they gracefully accepted. For the sake of power and prestige, the revolutionary government couldn’t allow this to happen. They would have to drive them out and make an example of the rebels. And one of the men assigned to the task was Napoleon.
The Siege of Toulon (August – December 1793) was the first defining moment of Napoleon’s career. He was initially under the command of two officious but incompetent commanders. But they were soon replaced, and Napoleon was put under the charge of General Jacques Dugommier, a man who recognized his immense talents. After months of careful preparation,on December 17 Napoleon assaulted the forts around the city. He managed to storm them, taking a bayonet wound to the leg in the process compliments of an unknown British soldier. He turned the forts’ guns against the British and Spanish fleets forcing them to withdraw. They took with them as many Royalist citizens from Toulon as possible. Those left in the city were mercilessly massacred by Republican troops.
Through his success at Toulon, Napoleon announced himself as a man of incredible ability, both to his immediate military superiors and to his remote political superiors back in Paris. His efforts didn’t go unnoticed, and at the age of just 24 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. Luck had certainly played its part. Napoleon had been in the right place at the right time taking part in an artillery-based offensive (as he was, by training, an artillery specialist). He had also been in the right place at the right time politically. The de facto revolutionary government, the Committee of Public Safety, championed merit over noble birth: any man who displayed it had the opportunity to rise through the ranks. And Napoleon had it in abundance.
The victor of Toulon now found himself commanding the artillery of the French Army of Italy. The army arrived in northern Italy in April 1794 and, at the Battle of Saorgio (24 – 28 April), Napoleon put his strategy into effect, directing French canon against the Austrians and Sardinians, driving them back first to Ormea in the mountains and then Saorge on the coast, and winning a decisive victory. But while he was enjoying a great deal of personal success in his Italian campaigns, his political masters were faring considerably worse. The government fell in July; Robespierre accused of harboring aspirations of tyranny. He was duly beheaded, along with 82 of his supporters over the coming days, bringing the Reign of Terror to an end. Back in Paris, Napoleon was briefly imprisoned, believed to be a supporter of Robespierre. But his services would soon be called upon again.